Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday March 30, 2014 @05:19AM
from the shades-of-gray dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "The Boston Globe has reviewed over 7,000 pages of documents from Aaron Swartz's court case, shedding light on the activities that got him in trouble and how MIT reacted to his case. Quoting: 'Most vividly, the e-mails underscore the dissonant instincts the university grappled with. There was the eagerness of some MIT employees to help investigators and prosecutors with the case, and then there was, by contrast, the glacial pace of the institution's early reaction to the intruder's provocation. MIT, for example, knew for 2½ months which campus building the downloader had operated out of before anyone searched it for him or his laptop — even as the university told JSTOR they had no way to identify the interloper.

And once Swartz was unmasked, the ambivalence continued. MIT never encouraged Swartz's prosecution, and once told his prosecutor they had no interest in jail time. However, e-mails illustrate how MIT energetically assisted authorities in capturing him and gathering evidence — even prodding JSTOR to get answers for prosecutors more quickly — before a subpoena had been issued. ... But a number of JSTOR's internal e-mails show a much angrier face in the months that Swartz eluded capture, with employees sharing frustration about MIT's "rather tepid level of concern." JSTOR officials repeatedly raised the prospect, among themselves, of going to the police, e-mails show."

Indeed. I have often said that it doesn't take a genuine conspiracy in order to have the effect of a conspiracy. A group of wrong-headed individuals, acting entirely on their own, can really mess things up in a way that appears to outside observers as the result of a concerted effort.

Well... I've seen MIT try to cope with problems. I've known people working at MIT try to get the Institute to do something about things that most of the people there care about. it's not a pretty picture.

The thing you may be missing about MIT is that it is a behaviorally rigid bureaucracy that swallows up and individual initiative and spits out... nothing. Yes, I know that describes many higher education institutions, but I've worked with many such institutions, even as part of a non-profit that was supp

I agree in part and disagree in part. Swartz was not an asshole, he was however a moron, who let occupioer types convince him that just because you protest, you cannot be arrested for your protests. Which is just the opposite of what Martin Luther King said which is that if you break laws protesting an unjust law, you should gladly go to jail.

That said, let us remember that what Swartz did was download a bunch of papers describing research that was mostly paid for by the government, and that researches paid [1] to be published. The money used to pay to publish also mostly out of government money. Fact is that the system for publishing academic articles served us well for many years, but is now obsolete. The job could effectively done better by the government sponsoring e-journals, and would be much cheaper then the government is paying now, and be free to anyone with internet access.

The thing is that I believe the Boycott Elvesier movement has done more to promote the cause of publicly open journals then anything that Swartz did.

[1] Because I'm sure some idiot will come along and claim that Swartz was stealing from the authors of the papers.

a) while the System for publishing needs to be overhauled seriously (and thats happening all the time) it is by no way obsolete

b) while publication fees exist these are usually minor, and are quite low if you dont demand printing features (e.g. colored prints)

c) I think JSTOR fulfills a important role. Without such a organization, univerities would be forced to eat the shit of the publishers in a much bigger extend

d) Not acting on the illegal copying of a big database would undermine the attempts to open up the situation. Something which Aaron did is exactly what the publishers alsways fear.

e) The MIT acted correctly. If a business partner of mine is attacked in such a way on my network, i have the responsibility to clear the situation and secure evidence but no responsibility to press charges on my own.

f) I dont share the interpretation that he did not know what he was doing

g) Reasons for suicides are complex. The assertion that somebody is responsible for a suicide, since he was not 100% positive and supportive about an individual is not the right message, especially *not* in the light of preventing future suicides

In this case it appears that one major factor was that his girlfriend was threatened and he seemed to think that suicide would take the pressure off her. Due to the fuss generated over his suicide he was correct and the threats of legal action against his girlfriend stopped.Are you starting to see what sort of people were involved here? If they were petty criminals instead of lawyers or their agents acting like petty criminals they would probably be doing time for their actions.

No, he was an asshole. The *scale and intensity* of his attempt to download and replicate *all* of JSTOR, including the indexing, was not only illegal in itself. Because of the amount of bandwidth he was using, he repeatedly crashed parts of JSTOR. That means that researchers and scholars woldwide lost access to a vital research tool. And as a response, and to protect the rest of the world's access, they finally had to cut off MIT's access. He was screwing with people doing medical research. People *die* because cutting edge research gets held back for bonehead reasons.

If Swartz had taken the single step of cutting the bandwidth he used by 75%, JSTOR wouldn't have kept crashing and had to punt MIT. And if he'd done it from his office at Harvard, *which had similar access to JSTOR*, there probably wouldn't have been a way to charge him, and it would be his employer's problem. Swartz was allowed on the MIT campus because of his Harvard ID, and his screw up has cast that whole reciprocal agreement between MIT and Harvard for library and campus access in doubt.

What Swartz did was not directly stealing from the authors of the research, it was making their research inaccessible while in progress. It screwed with the thesis writing of friends of mine, and interfered with research projects throughout MIT. Frankly, MIT should have been *much* more eager to help slap cuffs on this twit, but they're traditionally very, very slow to act against "cracking" because it's *embarrassing*, and the prosecutors inevitably fuck it up. Look into the David Lamacchia case about 10 years ago for an example

Let's say it again: copying is not stealing. You keep using that word "steal" because... you're trying to strengthen your argument, which is that Swartz was a jerk?

To further this assertion that Swartz was a jerk, you say that he effectively did a Denial of Service attack, though you concede that it was probaly not intentional. Let's look at that charge a little more. If some high school kid crashes the school web server by repeatedly hitting F5, is the kid in the wrong? Or, maybe, you know, the peop

Pretending "Copying is not stealing" is like pretending "no one can own the land". It ignores the last two thousand years of copyright law (dating back to the Irish "Cathach" document). I refer more to Swartz's abuse. He had legal access to the documents, He attempted to download and steal the _index_ by replicating the entire contents of JSTOR.

JSTOR was not hit with DDOS. The abusive download, its speed, and its fat bandwidth pipe did, indeed, create repeated Denial-of-Service, just not a "Distributed" on

Vandalism, arson, speeding, blasphemy, slander, theft, fraud, and copying are all different. None of these should be lumped together as somehow different forms of stealing, not even fraud, vandalism or copying. While the goal of most fraud may be theft, it isn't always. Money is not the only thing that can be forged. So can driver's licenses and identification papers. Throwing a brick through your window is not stealing, it is vandalism. You lost a window, and no one gained it, whereas copying is the

Yes, and the laws that govern copyright violation are linked to those of theft, in theft. Please, don't pretend "copying is not theft" and that that somehow covers this case when the law is pretty clear that it _was_ theft, due to its scale.

> No. Journals are no longer expensive to run. Neither the authors nor the reviewers receive any compensation from the publishers.

I'm not pretending, I'm saying, right out, that copying is not stealing. Some kinds of copying are illegal. Some kinds of copying may be immoral or unethical or unfair regardless of legality. But copying is not stealing.

But we are at an impasse. If we can't agree on whether copying is or is not theft, and why, then further discussion is pointless. I think years from now, the public will embrace sharing as a natural right, and we will devise other ways to compensate artists and scientists. Trying to

> If you persist in this belief that committing a DDOS or other disabling attacks is OK

Judging from your Slashdot ID, both you, and I, then, have participated in many actions which you seem to consider DDoS attacks --- namely, Slashdottings. I wonder if you'd be OK, then, that you should be charged with felonies for each and every one of those actions? Oh, I forgot --- you don't have to worry --- you're not someone who has a public presence so that convicting you could be politically worthwhile.

> Judging from your Slashdot ID, both you, and I, then, have participated in many actions which you seem to consider DDoS attacks --- namely, Slashdottings. I wonder if you'd be OK, then, that you should be charged with felonies for each and every one of those actions? Oh, I forgot --- you don't have to worry --- you're not someone who has a public presence so that convicting you could be politically worthwhile.

That's an odd, but interesting question. The last time I "slashdotted" a company I also called

> One factor that made Aaron Swartz's behavior so reprehensible was that he _kept doing it_, apparently at full capacity,> despite the obvious consequences to JSTOR and to MIT.

If you read JSTOR's own account, available on their website [jstor.org], Swartz continued to download between September and January, but without them noticing it. Somehow that makes me believe that he modified his behavior (including throttled bandwidth) so that only a new kind of analysis on JSTOR's part (probably statistical) gave him awa

What possibly makes you think that JSTOR is ossified? They've been very progressive with how they handle new document formats, with the overwhelming number of new specialty journals, and with the advances in the sheer size of the data in new and already cross referenced work. That work is ongoing, it's _not_ cheap, and they're working very hard every day to manage it.

They've been precisely what a non-profit should be, and I applaud their efforts.

. That means that researchers and scholars woldwide lost access to a vital research tool. And as a response, and to protect the rest of the world's access, they finally had to cut off MIT's access. He was screwing with people doing medical research. People *die* because cutting edge research gets held back for bonehead reasons.

If we're being precise, JSTOR is mostly a database of humanities journals. If we were talking about Web of Science or Scopus, then sure, perhaps that could've occurred. Even if it w

I don't hate the man. I didn't hate the man. I just don't think it's fair to lay any blame on JSTOR or MIT for defending themselves from his abuse, and it _was_ criminal abuse of their resources, even if you refuse to call copying documents theft. Simply _scaling back_ the bandwidth of his downloads would have avoided JSTOR's problems and MIT's eventual cooperation with a criminal investigation, and people at MIT or campus guests like Aaron could have done their research unhii

> It's as if Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and instead of a $10 fine, found herself charged under anti-terrorism legislation with a 15 year prison sentence for disobeying TSA regulations

You forgot the part about "was welcomed on a *different bus* that didn't go to her home but which she decided to use to protect her own neighborhood bus, was welcomed on the other bus with a free transfer from her other bus pass, proceeded to *siphon off all the gas*, made the bus crash, and when kicked off the

You failed your metaphor test yourself. Swartz didn't use anything but bandwidth that would have gone wasted otherwise. There is no real physical metaphor that makes sense. And it was JSTOR that cut off access, not Swartz: "MIT was harmed in the process, Grimson said, with 10,000 researchers denied an important resource for several days as JSTOR sought to cut off the mass downloading."

> Swartz didn't use anything but bandwidth that would have gone wasted otherwise.

No, he didn't use only "bandwidth that would have gone wasted otherwise", He overwhelmed the _JSTOR_ servers at least once, enough to crash some critical JSTOR services. That cut off access not just for MIT but for researchers worldwide. And the amount of bandwidth he was using slowed JSTOR significantly for MIT's students and researchers repeatedly in the months before he was arrested.

Which is just the opposite of what Martin Luther King said which is that if you break laws protesting an unjust law, you should gladly go to jail.

That tactic is out of date. The government has adapted to it. Now if you break laws protesting an unjust law, you are arrested and go to jail until your cause is long dead (or better yet, you are) and nobody even notices except a few unimportant true-believers.

Those trolls that Glenn Greenwald wrote about are trying to prevent Aaron from being martyred.
"Convinced by some occupiers"? So you're trying to say teh evul OWS corrupted his pure heart? Please. On the other hand, you could say Aaron was inspired upon seeing occupiers help people who were illegally forclosed upon reclaim their homes. But you'd sooner subtly shit on a populist movement like OWS.
Loaded, weasely words. Nice try, ttoll.

I could not help thinking of 16-year old freshmen in my MIT class who committed suicide some decades ago. Before MIT he was the center of attention in his hometown for his brilliance. At MIT he was just another "average" genius hacker and not the center of attention.

I'm guessing when Aaron mastered some new project he got bored and moved on. Couldnt really complete a degree or product then. I am not sure to parent or manage these these kind of geniuses.

> I do not understand the rationale for universities and researchers more particularly wanting to have their research locked behind pay-walled services such as JSTOR

It's well indexed and cross referenced, reliably available, and has become the "one-stop" resource for research documents. That is _invaluable_ when looking for obscure documents or tying together research among multiple fields. JSTOR is getting paid, and not an outrageous amount, for that work. Some fool replicating their entire index and layout, as Aaron Swartz was clearly attempting, means that their income to continue the organization of the material dries up and will not be continued. And JSTOR subscriptions have been much more cost effective than Google searching or library searching for research documents.

It's the same reason newspapers or magazines put up paywalls: one has to pay the writers and editors, or in this case the indexers and the maintainers of the quite robust and effective back end. Good backups and failover facilities are not free, and JSTOR has been a reliable and invaluable resource. Aaron was threatening that by overwhelming and crashing the services. The documents are kept available much longer, and much more reliably, than a community driven or freeware service could hope to manage. JSTOR see themselves as librarians of knowledge, not as vendors of knowledge, and I applaud their efforts.

Not just any somebody. This particular somebody had been instrumental in organizing public opposition to the SOPA act. Schwartz was targeted by the Justice Department in a clear cut case of political suppression.

As we all know, the Department under Holder and Breuer has better things to do with their time(banks, guns, etc), but instead chose to politicize their offices instead of upholding justice.

No, this was someone who'd been caught, repeatedly, doing marginally illegel or marginally legal bulk downloads of paid websites. Aaron's abuse of the PACER resources should have correctly led prosecutors that he'd pulled this sort of thing before and would continue doing so without an actual conviction.

I'm not sure that guilt is the right response. His father is probably feeling absolutely destroyed by this, and I don't think he needs to be dragged through the muck by people looking for someone to blame.

Kids like Aaron are probably all over the place - young people who think the only moral thing to do in the world is to try to steal from those with power because of how that power has been so abused by its bearers. I don't blame them for thinking that way, but it's really sad that there's nobody other th

Except that JSTOR abused _nothing_. They're a non-profit corporation. They did all the work to _organize_ the data and make it a 24x7 worldwide resource. Their rates are very reasonable, they had excellent sliding scales for poorer clients, and universities, laboratories, and libraries worldwide, and their clients were able to share those resources with the public. JSTOR is available in public libraries world wide, and they're a _model_ of ho

For your own good, you might be wise to stay out of this one. In much of this debate the role of industry in determining who should and should not have access to certain empowering resources gated by the universities, for the sake of creating and managing a skilled workforce, is seriously contentious. To step in and attempt to use your power to force through certain changes risks a serious lose of customer and social confidence.

I never really understood why Swartz felt he needed to break into a closet at MIT in order to download those journal articles. I am all in favor of information being freely available, but I don't agree with his choice of method.

Every public university I have been to thus far (and some private ones as well) has had public wifi that grants anyone on campus the ability to access all the digital journals that their library subscribes to. Unless MIT is different, he could have just used the wifi (or perhaps

In his office at Harvard. He had legitimate JSTOR access there. The difficulty is that he needed _bandwidth_, and ideally to avoid detection on the routine network maps managed by IT staff, and to avoid the typical monitoring and proxy configurations found on most competently administered public wi-fi access points.

Precisely. Why enter a networking closet when you can just do the download from a place where you are already allowed to go?

The difficulty is that he needed _bandwidth_, and ideally to avoid detection on the routine network maps managed by IT staff

Was there a reason why those papers needed to be downloaded in such rapid succession? If he was able to get - for example - 20GB of papers in a day, what difference would it make if it took him a week instead? I can't find a solid argument for why he couldn't have done it without using the networking closet.

As for detection, if he was downloading papers that the school had acces

>> and to avoid the typical monitoring and proxy configurations found on most competently administered public wi-fi access points.

> Even if the wi-fi throttled down his bandwidth for excessive usage (though an academic wi-fi should be set up more intelligently, only doing such things when the traffic is purely recreational rather than academic), he still could have obtained the data - it would have taken longer.

The throttling would have shown up and been traceable to his wireless MAC address. And h

He could have worked around that by downloading at a slower rate. If you are downloaded a lot at one time it's going to draw attention but if he downloaded at a slower rate (say an article every ten minutes) then it isn't likely to draw that much attention.

An article every 10 minutes is slower than new articles appear at JSTOR. But I agree, he could have reduced the chance of detection by lowering his download rate. Even at MIT, if he'd lowered his download rate by 75% I don't think he'd have crashed JSTOR and they'd have pursued his abuse much less avidly: perhaps law enforcement would have never been involved at all.

If JSTOR is disseminating public-domain papers and just charges the cost of hosting them for downloaders, what was it afraid that Swartz would actually do with the trove of downloaded papers? Had he gone set up his own database and website, it would have incurred costs similar to JSTOR, and so Swartz would have charge about the same to keep it running.

If Swartz' bulk downloading was crashing the site, why doesn't JSTOR just teergrube its download process. Imposing a one-second delay at the start of each dow

That the MIT IT people must have been frazzled about this. I've been in similar situations and my answer pretty much echoes theirs in that I too told them so.

But the case against the kid did i fact have several exploitable holes in it. That whole guest access thing. I've been in places where we've had to have public access. I made sure that the screws were torqued tight regarding security on those public machines. You could get on the web but you were blocked off from things the content manager didn't li

I forget the exact details. but the feds were pursuing a a student startup company related to bitcoin. MIT decided to give some legal help to them and to future such problems. I think the Swartz case increased their sensitivity.